Yes, that is what proxies are for. I recommend you watch all of Chaos Group's tutorials on their youtube channel. They cover proxy use on their latest webinar concerning setting up an exterior scene from start to finish. She starts with proxies at about 29 minutes in.
Cheers!
GD
I have a 'semi-destructive' method I use. First, group all the ceiling slats, then make a copy and move to a layer to turn off or hide (this is just to have a copy with components in tact that you can revert to later, if needed for editing). On the working group, explode all the slats and apply the texture. Now, select all faces and use 'Eneroth Texture Tools' plugin's random offset. You can keep running 'random offset' to create different seeds, and select single faces to finer tune the uv layouts. You can also use this tool to rotate texture 90° where off. (big thanks to Eneroth....this plugin is brilliant.)
That is for native sketchup image exports. If you are using Vray or plan to one day, it is much easier to do this. Just run bitmap through tri-planar texture and you can automatically set texture offset..(among many other things).
Cheers!
I use Simlab exporter. It exports straight from Max to skp format. Need to convert Vray mats to standard mats before export. Other than that, very happy with it. They have a free trial for up to 30 exports to see if it works for you or not:
[http://www.simlab-soft.com/3d-plugins/SketchUp-from-3DS-main.aspx](http://www.simlab-soft.com/3d-plugins/SketchUp-from-3DS-main.aspx)
I would recommend you look at the GTX 1050 ti. They draw just 75W and don't even need a power cable from the PSU, they're powered straight through the PCI slot. Also has some pretty nice minimal form-factors which vary between vendors, so look around at the model's dimensions...some are more compact models than others.
Just took a look on Amazon and they can be had for between $170 - $230 USD at the moment, and it has all the horsepower you'll need for sketchup. Definitely wouldn't recommend a Quadro unless you're using solidworks or catia...or some other crazy software that states you HAVE to have a Quadro to run it. The bang for the buck with GTX vs Quadro is a no-brainer these days. A good rule of thumb is, if you needed a quadro...you'd know it. The P1000 would basically give you a slower card with less cuda cores & clock rates at almost twice the price.
I've been using GTX cards for years with autocad, 3ds max, photoshop, etc and haven't had any problems..and have saved a lot money not buying quadros.
Good luck getting your rig sorted. Cheers!
GD
Excuse me for being off topic... But what are you using for recording screen and creating gif's (windows)? Can you point me towards a tutorial?
Always love Box & other's mini-tutorial gif's...and would love to figure how to contribute my own from time to time...(without trying out the 100's of apps that came up when I googled...)
Cheers!
You may need to look at your 'gamma and LUT' settings. Specifically, the 'affect color picker' check box. You may be operating in 2 different color spaces. Could need to change the gamma. Look into 'linear workflow'...(and if it is new to you...get prepared to be very confused!)
We use Fredo's TopoShaper for all things contour/topo related. There are tons of youtube tutorials for how to operate and what all the features do.
Here is Plugin thread: https://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=52039
@rich o brien said:
Anything in the ruby console?
I didn't check...had a looming deadline that morning... Actually, i'm not sure I could check the ruby console....sketchup wouldn't open(bugsplat while file was opening.) Wouldn't I need SU open to check console?..(i don't know squat about programming..) Is there a log file that stores info in these cases?
Yeah, I hear ya...you would have loved trying to figure out the settings in Vray 1.48 then! Made you feel more like a nasa engineer than a 3d artist..they've really simplified things lately.
But yes, that's why I always recommend moving the slider back to a default 'low, medium, or high' setting and starting from there. Then just change one parameter at a time doing a small region render to experiment and see if the change brings anything to the table (or takes away....).
I like to enable history in the VFB, the 'H' button at the bottom, then in settings enable 'automatically save'. Then each 'region render' you do automatically saves and you can easily look at the however many quick region renders you did and compare the time. Even if the regions are taking 15 seconds to render, you know if you change a setting and now it's taking 30 seconds...it probably going to adversly effect the time the whole rendering will take...
I was recently troubleshooting lighting in an interior kitchen scene. Render was taking +/-90 minutes. I did render region renderings around one can light and tried some different settings, then did a region rendering around a few other lights, then on to a region showing a cabinet and floor and played with some other settings along with sun/environment settings. Long story long: In 30 minutes of troubleshooting I dramatically increased the quality of the image and brought the render time down from 90 minutes to +/-30 minutes, or less depending on angle rendered. (I also added some fill lights to help with some darker areas, less noise to clean = faster render)
Remember every scene will be different and have its own factors so you'll always need to play with/experiment with some settings here or there. Good to start from defaults and tweak settings one at a time and evaluate them carefully....and don't be afraid to just reset to defaults and start over if you stray to far from the path.... 
Hope you're getting things worked out, cheers!
Just wanted to share -
I had to disable most of my plugins due to a conflict with Vray 3.6.01. After update to Vray 3.6.02, most conflicts were fixed, but it seems that it still isn't getting along with Sketchucation Tools. After installing Sketchucation Tools, getting bugsplat while SU file is loading. Had to delete from Plugins folder to get SU file to open.
Hope they get all the conflicts worked out, I really miss Sketchucation Tools. 
First of all, your setting aren't making too much sense. Maybe go back to default 'medium' setting with the slider and start again from there.
Some other recommendations to easily cut down render time from glancing at your settings:
-turn off 'progressive'. progressive mode is great for setting up lighting and testing scenes to get a quick preview, etc. But bucket rendering is faster for production rendering (straight from Chaos Group)
-turn off 'depth of field'. It gives great results but at a premium, but you can do the same thing instantly in photoshop, instead of adding LOT of time to your render
-I see you have a bitmap in GI skylight override..do you a have a solid reason for this? I ask because a lot of times people use overrides when they actually don't need to override anything....
Hope this helps you get your times down. (I've had few tonight, so excuse any #%$^^*) hope you took my humor in stride.
I always recommend going back to default settings (for everything) and start from there. CG did a great job of balancing settings with the slider settings when they implemented the new engine in Vray 3.
The previous posts gave great advice too. Specially the extra lighting. It can greatly cut down render time / noise....and you can easily adjust brightness in photoshop or even quicker through the VFB. But as they already said, low light interiors just take longer. With practice you can cut this time down, but experiment wisely with settings one at a time so you know what effect they have(after starting over at default). You can easily unbalance your setting and multiply your time while comprising quality if you're not careful.
Good luck and happy rendering....Cheers!
GD
To get accurate help, you'll need to specify how exactly you are 'mirroring'...
Are you scaling by -1?
Using 'Flip along axis'?
Using a script like Tig's 'Mirror'?
@sjs66 said:
Dam flippin' Flip. I can never tell which way the "flip" will go, always takes 3 flips to get right! Flippin' hell....lol. I like -1 scaling.
Maybe it's my raging dyslexia...but, It usually takes me 3 tries to get it right, also 
+
(I'm an old autocad guy, so Tig's mirror is my go-to method.)
I apologize, I didn't mean to hijack - accidentally posted in your thread. I was hoping the moderator could delete this post or start it as a new thread....
Hey yall,
I'm hoping that some of you with real experience can give me some advice..(and save me from reading all 36 pages of this thread and countless hours of google research.)
I'm looking to get into 3D printing. We're an arch viz firm and will be doing all architecture, mainly residences. Thinking probably start off on the cheaper side, until we get our teeth sharpened and become more knowledgeable the tech and about what our needs are. I kind of envision us 'popping out' a basic exterior model for every project, and offering upgrades for removable roofing & floorplan/walls. Maybe being able to paint colors/texture one...?
But I'm getting ahead of myself... Right now, looking for advice on getting the foot in the door, entry level - best for basic architecture models, but large enough bed so the client can see the model without needing glasses, also what medium is recommended, etc. Definitely open to DIY kits..they look fun.
To be clear, I'm not looking for anyone to enlighten on what 'google searching' is...I'm familiar, thanks. 
Just checking to see if I can get some advice from withing our sketchucation community from people that actually have experience. My research so far just seems to confuse me more...so many choices, so many opinions, and not a lot of advice geared straight towards producing arch models.
cheers!
GD
(sorry for any crazy misspellings and omitted words...I'm horribly dyslexic(for real) and don't have time required to proofread my crazy writing at the moment...)
Thanks to everyone who responded and gave me recommendations for troubleshooting!
I just wanted to give an update for anyone experiencing the dame kind of issues. First of all, its been about month since I got the problems sorted out, so my memory is little hazy. Secondly, I had so many things going wrong at the same time that I'm not sure what problems were preexisting and which I caused myself while troubleshooting the original problems while stressed out and running on no sleep with deadlines looming.
Anyway, I do remember a huge performance boost after reinstalling Sketchup again. Since I'd already done this recently during the trouble shooting process, I think a big source of the slow down was due to somehow not right-clicking the .exe and choosing 'run as administrator' to reinstall sketchup. Big lesson - not matter what kind of seasoned sketchup veteran you may think you are, you can still make dumb mistakes. Anyone have problems like I described, try doing the right-click, 'run as administrator' and choose 'repair'. So I must have mistakenly installed sketchup improperly by not running the installation exe as admin while troubleshooting my original problem (original problem was a failing drive).
Another issue was sorted out by disabling all plugins, then enabling them a few at time as I needed them and restarting often to see which caused problems. I'm happy to say that the latest Vray 3.6 update solved the plugin conflicts.
There were some other problems, but I completely cant remember them now...it's been a long month. I'll update if they come back to me...
@bruce watt said:
I have all SKP file associated with Sketchup Viewer. As I have so many iterations of the same file for different designs, I find it so much quicker to load up in Sketchup viewer and find the correct file. Then once found just right click on the file and click on 'open with Sketchup 2018'.
Thanks, Bruce! I had never heard of Sketchup Viewer before. It's definitely great for opening huge files quickly to find the version you're looking for..seems it will open any size skp really fast. (specially good for those of us who use tons of plugins and have files with a lot of Vray data or Skatter objects!)
Cheers!
SLB - Thanks so much for the reply! I've been too busy to even think any more about it, but once I get some free time I'm going to compare installed plugins and try to get to the bottom of it.
Fredo - Of course, I have ALL of your plugins installed....I don't think sketchup would be much use to me without them! Thanks for all your brilliant code! (your plugins grand total at 836 milliseconds...so don't think they're the culprit) 
Evermotion models usually come in the following formats: MAX C4D OBJ FBX, with several flavors of Max files, not just for Vray (scanline, mental ray, etc) and you only download the ones you want when you want.
I would go ahead and buy the Evermotion set, then download a demos of the Simlab importer plugins for sketchup - obj importer, fbx, etc. and see which ones works best for your workflow. The $100 or so for the Simlab plugins are definitely worth it if you plan to use often and want to build a library of skp objects from high quality Max models. They are fast and do a good job if you use them correctly.
Again, install demos of various Simlab importers for Sketchup, then try importing different file formats to Sketchup to see which works best for you. (if you don't want to purchase Evermotion set yet, then you can try downloading free assets of various formats.)
Also, the general work-around for doing 'real' 3D work without having a 3DS Max license is using Blender. There will be a slight learning curve, but you can open files, layout UVs and export to different formats.
Hello,
Is there a way to log how long different plugins take to load at startup? My office machine takes ages for sketchup to start, while my home pc loads sketchup files rather quickly.....and the home pc is an old i5, office is an overclocked 6 core i7.
I figure the culprit is most likely a rogue plugin...I use a lot of plugins. Any advice (other than loading each plugin one a time and restarting sketchup to test each one) would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
GD
Think about posting your skp file so people can have a look and see what is wrong. Also, CG released a new version, Vray 3.6. You should update, there are a lot of new features and bug fixes.